So for the past couple weeks I've been interested in blacksmithing, so in my attempt to start I've managed to make a half ass'd furnace out of a camp fire pit in my back yard. It works well enough to heat the iron to a nice workable temperature. I was wondering if anyone has pictures of ideas of a brick built fireplace that has a proper air intake to reach optimal temperatures easier.

What is the job of your average engineer like? Do they usually sit in front of their computers all day long? Or is most of their work time dedicated to observing the item they're engineering, and physically assembling it? Or is it something completely different?

Well, I work as a sales engineer and studied EE. I sell induction motors and then we go over with customers, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering et.c. and check what we can do. The starting current needs to be this and that so that the fuse in the ship doesn't blow et.c., this amount of torque on the shaft from this direction.I work with people all the time. I wish I had a job where I could just look at blueprints or do CAD, program or something. I have to deal with people all the time which can be nice but also god damn exhausting.

>>4865I'm a chemical engineer, working as a process engineer at a refinery (as opposed to say, a chemical engineer working as a project engineer, safety engineer, process control engineer, scheduler, operations manager, master planner, etc.).

Containment is a huge issue so a lot of time is spent making sure things are done and designed safety, and troubleshooting issues. Not sure what you mean by transportation. Refining is old tech so there isn't a lot of new and exciting theoretical work to be done, that said the kit we have on site is fairly technical and you'll likely use all aspects of your eng degree. E.g. you'll rarely be concerned with flammability in food process, and would not often deal with reactors in mining engineering.

Anyway, a lot of time is spent arse covering, adhering to this standard or that design spec, looking at proceduers, staring at trends to figre out what went wrong. Be warned.

>>4759I do the same thing although I'm no scientist, i like to think that everything that anyone says is an opinion and that they should not be affected by the way that i have come to communicate. maybe i do sound like a huge wankstain, but i at least acknowledge that and assume that they do too.

Some dude on 4chin's /pol/ was talking about polywells, and it got me thinking about cooling systems (I understand if it were fusion you'd need shielding) and it got me to thinking about commercializing highly efficient coolant systems as a buffer to mess with high energy designs. I don't know anything about cryogenics and was wondering if someone could share a book or some experience. Posting some Cambell to set the Scottish mood.

>>6043Well I wanted to make a little Stirling engine to cryocool things for funsies.http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applications_of_the_Stirling_engineMade by Scot for Scots.I wanted to use it in tandem with something like a polywell or a fire to store energy and play with entropy. I figured with a lot of energy and by storing all of it I could fool another system into negentropy at a level that would be useful for computation or propulsion. Hence Tesla. Don't know too much and would like to duke it out with gay engineer students so an interesting conclusion or a direction will be reached. Thanks for responding.

Hey guys. I didn't really know this board existed, so this might be the perfect place to ask about this.I'm going to build a vaporizer. But there's one thing I'm having trouble figuring out, and that's the heating element.I have a round steel piece about a centimeter across that's flat on the bottom and has a cone-shaped hole drilled about a centimeter deep drilled into the top, which I think will be perfect for the bowl piece. So I had the idea to wrap a heating element around this metal piece, put a thermistor on the bottom so it can keep the temperature constant, and then the herb goes in the top. Problem is, I'm having a lot of trouble finding nichrome wire that's insulated that I can wrap around the metal. Unless I buy a huge quantity of it, I can't get any. http://store.makerbot.com/nichrome-wire-30-gaI was able to find this but unfortunately it's out of stock. Does anybody have suggestions for alternatives, or an idea where I can find some of this stuff?Like this one in the picture, it'll have a glass jar over the bowl piece that collects the vapor. What do you think?

If I remember correctly, the ideal vaporizing temperature is around 185/195 C. maybe you could try to put something of a heatresistant plastic around it, so you`d coat the metal piece instead of the wire. but you`d have to make sure the wiring wouldn`t touch itself.

I use a FM transmitter in my car for music. I've noticed that the reception gets significantly better when I touch the transmitter/cord. I've noticed it on a lot of radio receivers but this is the most relevant

How would your hand be able to change the signal strength so significantly?

Your body fluids are conductive, so your body acts as an antenna when coupled to a transmitter (or receiver). The transmitter normally uses wires in the the cord as it's antenna, The proximity of your hand to the cord forms a small coupling capacitance, allowing the transmitter to also use your body as it's antenna, increasing it's range.

im just a blue collar dildo just like everyone else. my job is technical, but it is very specialized. therefore all of my knowledge of this job comes from 9 years of training and trial and error. why is it that every engineer that i meet have this supiriority complex? more than half of them that i meet have zero trouble shooting skills. no communication skills. and are generally wrong about every problem they are asked to "solve". and they act like they are to good to try the solutions that us "common workers" already know work. engineers are dicks. at least every one ive ever met.

>>6016Absolutely yes, I was in engineering study for 2 years, but the whole class was the most wankiest, superior, idiotic bunch of dumb-smartfucks you had ever seen.

Having since done a couple of years of work, which I should have done a couple of years ago, its easy to see that the entire 'engineer' industry is a lie told to the worst of spoilt brats so that tradesmen, labourers and real engineers (welders, fabricators, operators) can have something to laugh at. As well as extending the billable hours of construction workers as they get paid to redo work which was designed wrongly by these highschool students with certificates and cardboard hats.

>>6029Don`t entirely agree on that. People who have an engineering degree should be credible engineers and should have a lot of skill. they just underestimate the skill it takes to actually do shit like welding. there`s companies that don`t have this problem with studid and arrogant engineers because they actually communicate with the people who do the production, and aren`t affraid to learn from them. these companies work a lot better than those who don`t do this shit.just my two cents

This is not engineering per se, but is about as relevant as any.I am looking for data on which engineering professions have the highest placement rate outside of school i.e. what % of graduates go on to employment within their field after X months.

I'm using this to do a few financial calculations. Thank you for your help.

Here's a bit of HW I can't turn in anymore, but don't understand because I wasn't in class for this particular material. Too many moments, too many unknowns for me to zap this one off the top of my head.

You don't need an EE degree for IT. An EE degree does open a shit ton of doors and opportunity though. Advise it? I'm not sure. You'd be better off just getting a B.S. in computer science or B.S. in IT etc. to better prepare you I guess.

>>5978I'm a senior in software engineering at a decent Canadian university and I second this. My school offers an EE minor in computer engineering that would bring it closer to compsci, but software engineering is like comp sci with a focus on the software development lifecycle and some computer engg for the physical background. The math is lot easier (and less prevalent) too. Any engineering degree will probably be more effort than its worth to break into IT though.

Get a degree in IT or computer engineering. These most surely have database and computer architecture courses. The physical properties of transistors don't matter if you just want to deal with IT/computers.